This may not be the first post in which I take a look at “small words with big meanings”, but I think it is a conflicting aspect of use and, since I’m interested in my students’ healthy performance, I take the liberty to adapt a long article from BBC World Culture, written by Hélène Schumacher and published on January 1st, 2021. The whole title: The most commonly-used word in English might only have three letters – but it packs a punch. You can find the full version here: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200109-is-this-the-most-powerful-word-in-the-english-language
Now, why would I undertake
such a task?
So this is an abbreviated
version. Fortunately, there will be some reactions.
‘The’. It’s
omnipresent; we can’t imagine English without it. But it’s not much to look at.
It isn’t descriptive, evocative or inspiring. Technically, it’s meaningless.
And yet this bland and innocuous-seeming word could be one of the most potent
in the English language.
‘The’ tops the
league tables of most frequently used words in English, accounting
for 5% of every 100 words used. “‘The’ really is miles above
everything else,” says Jonathan Culpeper, professor of linguistics at Lancaster
University. But why is this? The answer is two-fold, according to the
BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth. George Zipf, a
20th-Century US linguist and philologist, expounded the principle of least
effort. He predicted that short and simple words would be the most frequent –
and he was right.
The second reason is that ‘the’ lies at the heart of
English grammar, having a function rather than a meaning. Words are split into
two categories: expressions with a semantic meaning and functional words like
‘the’, ‘to’, ‘for’, with a job to do. ‘The’ can function in multiple ways. This
is typical, explains Gary Thoms, assistant professor in linguistics at New York
University: “a super high-usage word will often develop a real flexibility”,
with different subtle uses that make it hard to define. Helping us understand
what is being referred to, ‘the’ makes sense of nouns as a subject or an
object. So even someone with a rudimentary grasp of English can tell the
difference between ‘I ate an apple’ and ‘I ate the apple’.
But although ‘the’ has no meaning in itself, “it seems
to be able to do things in subtle and miraculous ways,” says Michael Rosen,
poet and author. Consider the difference between ‘he scored a goal’ and
‘he scored the goal’. The inclusion of ‘the’ immediately signals something
important about that goal. Perhaps it was the only one of the match? Or maybe
it was the clincher that won the league? Context very often determines sense.
There are many exceptions regarding the use of the
definite article, for example in relation to proper nouns. We wouldn’t expect
someone to say ‘the Jonathan’ but it’s not incorrect to say ‘you’re not the
Jonathan I thought you were’.
This could lead to a belief that ‘the’ is a workhorse
of English; functional but boring. Yet Rosen rejects that view. While primary
school children are taught to use ‘wow’ words, choosing ‘exclaimed’ rather than
‘said’, he doesn’t think any word has more or less ‘wow’ factor than any other;
it all depends on how it’s used. “Power in language comes from context... ‘the’
can be a wow word,” he says.
This simplest of words can be used for dramatic
effect. At the start of Hamlet, a guard’s utterance of ‘Long live the King’ is
soon followed by the apparition of the ghost: ‘Looks it not like the King?’
Who, the audience wonders, does ‘the’ refer to? The living King or a dead King?
This kind of ambiguity is the kind of ‘hook’ that writers use to make us
quizzical, a bit uneasy even. “‘The’ is doing a lot of work here,” says Rosen.
Deeper meaning
‘The’ can even have philosophical implications.
‘The’ adds substance to phrases like
‘the man in the Moon’, implying that he exists (Credit: Alamy)
The British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote a paper
in 1905 called On Denoting, all
about the definite article. Russell put forward a theory of definite
descriptions. He thought it intolerable that phrases like ‘the man in the Moon’
were used as though they actually existed. He wanted to revise the surface
grammar of English, as it was misleading and “not a good guide to the logic of
the language”, explains Smith. This topic has been argued about, in a
philosophical context, ever since. “Despite the simplicity of the word,”
observes Thoms, “it’s been evading definition in a very precise way for a long
time.”
Atlantic divide
Even within the language, there are subtle differences in how ‘the’ is used in British and American English, such as when talking about playing a musical instrument. An American might be more likely to say ‘I play guitar’ whereas a British person might opt for ‘I play the guitar’. But there are some instruments where both nationalities might happily omit ‘the’, such as ‘I play drums’. Equally the same person might interchangeably refer to their playing of any given instrument with or without the definite article – because both are correct and both make sense.
Americans are more likely to say ‘I
play piano’, whereas a Brit would probably say ‘I play the piano’ (Credit:
Alamy)
And yet, keeping with the musical vibe, there’s a
subtle difference in meaning of ‘the’ in the phrases ‘I play the piano’ and ‘I
clean the piano’. We instinctively understand the former to mean the piano
playing is general and not restricted to one instrument, and yet in the latter
we know that it is one specific piano that is being rendered spick and span.
Culpeper says ‘the’ occurs about a third less in
spoken language. Though of course whether it is used more frequently in text or
speech depends on the subject in question. A more personal, emotional topic
might have fewer instances of ‘the’ than something more formal. ‘The’ appears
most frequently in academic prose, offering a useful word when imparting
information – whether it’s scientific papers, legal contracts or the
news. Novels use ‘the’ least, partly because they have conversation
embedded in them.
‘Origins
We don’t know exactly where ‘the’ comes from – it
doesn’t have a precise ancestor in Old English grammar. The Anglo Saxons didn’t
say ‘the’, but had their own versions.
‘The’ deserves to be celebrated. The three-letter word
punches well above its weight in terms of impact and breadth of contextual
meaning. It can be political, it can be dramatic – it can even bring
non-existent concepts into being.
You can hear more about
‘the’ on BBC Radio 4’s Word
of Mouth: The Most Powerful Word.
